Adventures in My Mind
 |
 |
 |
 |
Apr 13, 2007
The Sky is Falling ... No it was just Imus
Before I weighed in on the most recent unpleasantness that was Imus, I wanted to watch the reaction. And, boy, what a reaction it was!
The analysis. The hand wringing. The sophistry. The pageant of it all. It seemed that the TV stations just couldn't get enough talking heads to put their particular spins. The liberals condemned the culture and corporations that make money off of such vitriol. The conservatives decried the double standard that claims calamity when Imus says "nappy-headed hoes" but demures when 50 Cent or Chappelle say "nigger."
Others chimed in with the ever popular "And what will we learn from all of this?" setting the stage for a new round in the great race debate. You know just like the ones we had after Katrina and O.J. and Rodney King and Tewanna Brawley and Watts and Selma and ... Oh, yes how far we've come.
This weeks public stoning of a once powerful broadcast titan was brought to us not by a changing tide of race and sex relations in this country, but by poor judgement and Imus's inability to see that there has, indeed, been some positive steps in said areas.
Imus's failure was not in the language that he used but the target to which he applied it. Those great athletes did nothing to attract his attention other than compete for the greatest reward they could ever get in their athletic lives. Regardles of what is known about these young women, we know that they are talented and work hard at their sport. We also know that he treated them unfairly. They did nothing to set themselves up as targets for his scorn and satire. A fact that was disasterously lost on Imus.
And that inability to distinguish a fair target from foul was his ruination. Someone like him gets paid to know that difference. Well, at leat he used to.
Sure NBC and CBS want us to believe that they did the right thing by removing a bigot from their airwaves, but all they did was remove a liability. He went from being a cash cow to costing them money almost overnight. When advertisers like AmEx pull their dollars, the writing is, as they say, on the wall. Business is business. And business, at that level, has nothing to do with decency.
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 10:20 PM
